Chapter 5
The locker room air was thick with post-practice funk.
The guys were huddled in small groups, and their voices dropped when I walked by.
It reminded me of when I lived in Baltimore, and the neighborhood knew something would pop off.
The problem was that I wasn’t sure if I was the one they would plot against or protect.
I leaned against my locker with a towel draped around my neck, trying my best to appear casual. Coach kept me after practice to tell me my minutes were going up. I was in the rotation.
“That drill though…”
My ears picked up on the whispers three lockers down. It was Will talking to Jenkins, a rookie point guard.
“It looked off to me, too. Like, I get contact happens, but that wasn’t regular,” Jenkins replied.
I pretended to focus on my phone. I scrolled through social media, but I was trying hard to hear them.
“Accident,” I muttered to myself, but no one heard me.
Greg, our veteran center, slammed his locker closed, causing me to flinch. I swear he looked at me for a solid three count and then shook his head before grabbing his bag.
“You good?” I asked.
He raised his eyebrows. “Just thinking about how opportunities opened up.”
He left the comment hanging in the air between us like smoke, and I watched his broad back disappear through the doorway.
My jaw tightened. The locker room was almost empty.
Most of the guys were eager to get home or to the club to celebrate our third win.
I should have been out there basking in the W and my sudden rise.
Instead, I was here with my ears strained to catch every accusation.
I slammed my locker shut hard enough to stop the chatter in the room.
Eyes landed on me, but no one would talk about it to my face.
The thing about waiting your turn is wondering if it would ever come.
I watched guys with half my basketball IQ get time because they had the right connections, the right story, or look.
Meanwhile, I was being told “your time’s coming.
” Yet, my knee ached on the cold mornings, reminding me my clock was ticking.
I put in work, and I earned this moment. What happened to Pearson was basketball. Shit happened.
I shook my head not wanting to go there—not now.
“Yo, Mateo.”
I looked up to see Brent, our shooting guard, gesturing toward the door. “Pearson’s sister Remi is at the door for you.”
Before I could get there, she was in the doorway with her arms crossed.
Her eyes were bloodshot like she hadn’t slept or had been crying.
Her locs were pulled tight, showing the sharp angle of her face.
She was wearing scrubs from her PT job, the pink ones with cartoon ducks on them.
The happy ducks felt like a mockery of the fury on her face.
“Uh, ma’am? You can’t be here. This is a men’s locker room,” our equipment manager stepped toward her awkwardly but determined.
Remi didn’t even look his way. “I need two minutes with Mateo Bryant.”
“It’s team policy?—”
“I said two minutes.”
She made the room go quiet. Even the showers were turned off as if the water itself was listening. I fixed my face into what Dani would call a media smile, unthreatening and pleasant.
“It’s cool. We can talk outside,” I told the equipment manager.
Remi didn’t move. “Right here is fine. I have one question, and everyone here deserves to hear the answer.”
Fuck.
Will and Jenkins exchanged looks. The rest of the teammates suddenly found reasons to hang back while pretending to pack their bags and moving slow.
“How’s Pearson doing? I was going to swing by the hospital?—”
“Don’t. Don’t pretend you give a shit about my brother.”
I placated, raising my hands. “Look, I see you’re upset, but?—”
She uncrossed her arms and stepped toward me. “Are you sure no one saw you push too hard?”
The room was silent. You could hear a pin drop, and heat flashed up my neck.
“Nobody pushed anything. Pearson zagged when he should have zigged and caught a bad break on a regular play. Shit happens every day.”
“Funny. I watched that tape twenty times, and I say it looked like you knew what you were doing.”
“There’s tape?” someone questioned.
Something flickered in Remi’s eyes like she found what she was looking for in my reaction.
“Someone’s always recording something, especially when the star player has a freak accident right when the next guy is desperate for a contract renewal,” she answered, but her eyes never left mine.
I forced a chuckle but felt sweat beading at my hairline. “I understand you’re upset about your brother, but you coming at me is crazy. You’re making accusations with no receipts.”
“Receipts? Is that what we’re calling video evidence now?”
There was no way. I made sure.
“If you had anything, you would be talking to the front office, not to me.”
“Who says I haven’t?” Remi tilted her head.
We stared each other down. The air vibrated with tension. My teammates were still absorbing every word.
“Like I said, it was an unfortunate accident, but it was clean basketball. Ask them. They were there.” I gestured around the room for backup.
Remi shook her head. “Unfortunate is the possibility of my brother not waking up from the coma he’s in, and if he does, the possibility of his career being over while you’re talking about unfortunate!”
I kept my face neutral, but my jaw clenched. “We all understand there are risks when we step on that court. Same for when I had a torn ACL.”
“Some people are willing to let those risks slide,” she said, stepping close enough for me to smell the antiseptic on her hospital clothes. She held my gaze for another beat before turning toward the door.
Before leaving, she paused. “Y’all might want to check who you’re protecting and why.”
The door swung shut behind her, and everyone was frozen for several minutes before someone cleared their throat, breaking the spell. Conversation resumed, and I returned to my locker to grab my duffel.
“Yo, is that stuff true? What she said about a tape?” Jenkins questioned.
I zipped my bag with force. “That woman is upset about her brother and looking for someone to blame.”
Jenkins nodded. “I was just wondering.”
I swung my bag over my shoulder and headed for the exit. I could tell they were watching me curiously, some suspiciously.
Outside, I took a deep breath and steadied myself. Remi knew something, but I wasn’t sure how much. The court was empty now, and the lights were dimmed. My phone pinged in my hand. Notifications were racking up like bodies. I hadn’t checked my phone since practice ended.I swiped it open.
Yo, man, we need to talk about what happened with Remi. That didn’t look right, man.
I deleted it. The next few were other teammates, some suspicious and others concerned. Everyone got the same treatment. Deleted. I wasn’t having conversations over text where words could be screenshotted and used against me at a later date.
The last one was from Coach.
My office 8:00 a.m. tomorrow.
My thumb hovered over it, and I deleted that one too. I’d hear whatever he had to say tomorrow. This wasn’t how this was supposed to go down. That goddamn pop and his head hitting the floor wasn’t part of the plan, but I can’t look back now.
Delete. Delete.
I erased every message to the point where people had me questioning myself.
I closed the messages app and opened my photos.
I scrolled back to Mason’s fifth birthday.
He had cake icing smeared on his face and was wearing a mini jersey with my number on it.
Danica was behind him smiling. The fire from the candles reflected in her eyes.
Everything I’d fought for was in this single frame.
My phone buzzed with another message.
Word is Remi is talking to a lawyer, you better lawyer up too.
After the digital clean up, I looked up to a figure in the doorway across the gym. My head snapped up. I didn’t know who to expect, but it was Danica. She wore her work clothes, fitted black pants and a cream-colored sweater with her hair pulled back into a sleek ponytail.
I recognized her body language, her crisis stance. Straight posture and chin raised meant shit was about to hit the fan. Our eyes locked.
“I didn’t expect you to come,” I said as I quickly locked the screen on my phone. She didn’t answer right away. She just studied me. The weight of her gaze made my skin prickle.
“Practice ran late, and then I had to speak with a coach about my minutes,” I added to fill the silence.
Technically, it wasn’t a lie, but it wasn’t the whole truth either. I could tell the way her eyebrows were lifted she knew the difference.
“I saw Remi in the parking lot. She was upset.”
Fuck. Of course, she did.
“She’s taking it hard… Pearson’s injury.” I nodded.
“Remi said some things.”
“Like what?” My heartbeat kicked up a notch.
Dani shook her head. She was good at the strategic pause, creating space for people to fill in the blanks with their own conclusions. It was what made her such a force in crisis PR.
I slid my phone into my pocket. “Whatever she said, she’s looking for someone to blame.”
“Is there someone to blame?” she questioned.
For a split second, I considered telling her—the pressure, my fading opportunity, the consequences left me spiraling beyond my control.
Still, Dani was the one person I didn’t have to perform for.
She was my confidante, my rock. However, the disappointment in her eyes stopped me.
She acted as if she already knew the answer and baited me to lie to her face.
I nodded and forced a smile as I headed her way. “Like I been saying, it’s basketball and shit happens. You of all people should know that.”
She watched me approach. Her face was neutral.
I could tell she was assessing damage, calculating angles, and planning containment strategies.
The fact that she was doing it with me told me everything I needed to know how bad this was getting.
I leaned in to kiss her cheek, and she allowed it but didn’t return the gesture.
“Are you hungry? We can grab something on the way home.”
Danica nodded. “Sure.”
As we turned to leave, I could tell she was still studying me, assessing me. I kept my expression relaxed and my resolve confident. I learned early that weakness invited attack. So I held my head high like a man with nothing to hide.
One thing about Dani, from day one, she always saw through my bullshit, and I knew my facade was going to crack. The question wasn’t whether it would fall apart.It was who I would take down with me when it did.